Puzder hearing next week

PUZDER HEARING NEXT WEEK: Labor secretary nominee Andrew Puzder will have his Senate confirmation hearing Feb. 16, according to a spokesperson for HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander. The committee received Puzder’s Office of Government Ethics paperwork Wednesday, and George Thompson, a spokesman for the nominee, says it will receive Puzder’s questionnaire today. Puzder is chief executive of CKE Restaurants, the parent company to the Carl’s Jr and Hardee’s fast-food franchises, and his business dealings — already a focus of his nomination — will be scrutinized by the committee.

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POLITICO obtained a letter from Puzder to a Labor Department ethics official that explained how he’s addressing potential conflicts of interest. He will resign from his positions at CKE Restaurants, he wrote. He will forfeit his bonus for 2016, along with an outstanding relocation reimbursement for moving last year to Tennessee (where the company is relocating) if CKE doesn’t manage to get these to him before he becomes Labor secretary. During his tenure, Puzder wrote, he “will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter in which [he knows] CKE Restaurant or CKE Holdings is a party or represents a party,” unless he receives a written waiver.

The recusal “also applies to any entity that owns 50 percent or greater interest” in CKE Restaurant Holdings or in its parent, CKE Holdings L.P., or to any entity of which either company owns 50 percent or more. “The scope of [the] recusal,” spokesman Thompson told Morning Shift, “is for a longer period of time than the law requires.” Puzder also pledged to divest investments in more than 200 companies within 90 days of confirmation, and to divest investments in 13 “illiquid investment funds” within 180 days. Read the letter here.

CKE, Puzder wrote in his letter, will buy back his vested Class A and Class B stock in the fast-food company. Richard Painter, who was chief ethics lawyer for President George W. Bush, told Morning Shift that the Senate should find out more about how that will work. “How is the company coming up with the cash to buy him out?” Painter asked. “Is he going to be in a situation where he feels he owes them?” If CKE leverages up the company, Painter said, “and then the fast food industry is hit with substantial minimum wage increases, they're going to have trouble paying off that debt."

Painter suggested that it’s unusual for a Cabinet nomineeto be granted six months--with the possibility of an extension-- to divest from so many investment funds. "I have never seen that many investment funds that the nominee has intended to hold onto for the first 180 days in office and maybe more, particularly when we don't know what's in them,” he said. “We don't know if he's going to do something that makes those equity funds more valuable or less valuable. We just have to trust him that he also doesn't know." Read Puzder’s detailed financial disclosure report here.

BULLYING JUDGES: A three-judge panel in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals didn’t issue a decision Wednesday on President Donald Trump’s travel ban, giving the chief executive even more time to talk trash about the federal judiciary.

On Friday, you’ll recall, James Robart,a federal judge in Seattle, issued a temporary restraining order against the travel ban, prompting Trump to pooh-pooh his credentials (“so-called judge”). Robart, it happens, was appointed by President George W. Bush. On Saturday Trump went further, saying Robart should be blamed “if something happens.” On Wednesday, Trump said the appeals court hearing (broadcast the previous evening) was “disgraceful” and that “a bad student in high school” could understand the lawfulness of the order. Even Trump’s own Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, reportedly found all these insults pretty hard to take. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D.-Conn.) told The Washington Post that Gorsuch said to him during a meeting Wednesday that Trump’s verbal attacks on the judiciary were “disheartening” and “disgraceful.”

What’s next? The appeals court will decide whether the stay should be lifted, but after that the legality of the controversial policy may end up before the Supreme Court. Read possible scenarios conjured by The Wall Street Journal’s Jacob Gershman here.

TRUMP SAYS HE SUGGESTED A MONTH’S NOTICE FOR TRAVEL BAN: The sudden rollout of Trump’s travel ban contributed to confusion and worry among affected travelers in the U.S. and abroad. But the hurried timeline wasn’t the president’s idea, he said at a conference for the Major Cities Chiefs Association Wednesday. "The law enforcement people said to me, 'Oh, you can't give a notice,'" Trump said. "I suggested a month. And I said, 'What about a week?' They said you can't do that because then people are gonna pour in before the toughness." More from CNN here.

TODAY: PRESSER ON PUZDER: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate HELP Committee Ranking Member Patty Murray will hold a an 11 a.m. press conference on the DOL nomination in S-115 of the U.S. Capitol Building.

FIDUCIARY RULE UPDATE: A federal judge in Texas denied a request Wednesday from the Chamber of Commerce and other business groups to vacate the fiduciary rule, which requires broker dealers act exclusively in the best interest of their clients and is scheduled to take effect April 10.

The decision is a temporary victory for the Obama administration. Trump issued a memo last week directing the Labor Department to consider delaying the rule, and on Wednesday (before the ruling) the Justice Department requested that the court stop consideration of the lawsuit. DOL will now “consider its legal options” to delay the rule’s start date, according to Acting Labor Secretary Ed Hugler.

HOMELAND SECURITY’S SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY: David Kravets of Ars Technica reported on Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly’s recent congressional testimony about social media and the travel ban. “We want to get on their social media with passwords,” Kelly said of travellers from the seven banned majority-Muslim nations. “What do you do, what do you say. If they don’t want to cooperate then they don’t come in … These are the things we’re thinking about.” More here.

KELLY HEADS SOUTH: The DHS chief will visit the Mexican border today and tomorrow, with stops in Arizona and California. He’ll meet with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey today in Nogales and travel to San Ysidro, Calif., on Friday. Kelly (who has said he hopes to finish the border wall within two years) visited Texas earlier this month.

FIGHT FOR $15 V PUZDER: The SEIU-backed Fight for $15 will hold its “biggest, loudest and most militant” protests Monday to oppose Puzder’s nomination, the campaign told Morning Shift. Fast food workers will hold rallies “during lunchtime rush hours” at Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s restaurants in two dozen cities across the country, as well as at Hardee’s corporate headquarters in St. Louis and CKE’s corporate offices in Anaheim, Calif. Workers will also protest at McDonald’s restaurants, since CEO Steve Easterbrook endorsed Puzder for the job last week.

GOP LEGISLATORS TACKLE SANCTUARY CITIES: Texas lawmakers aim to put pressure on so-called sanctuary cities with a GOP-led bill that would nix state funding for cities that refuse to hold undocumented immigrants on behalf of federal immigration officials. The bill (which cleared the state senate this week) would also threaten public officials with misdemeanor charges for failing to comply with federal requests, Dan Forsh reports in the Wall Street Journal.

“Texas’s proposal has moved especially fast, as Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, has made the issue a priority and threatened in recent weeks to strip state funding from sanctuary cities,” Forsh writes. Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio are considering similar measures. More from the Journal here.

OSHA CASE TO SCOTUS?: The Supreme Court was asked to review a final order by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration against a chemical plant contractor in a case involving a worker who was burned on the job. Jacobs Field Services North America Inc. requested that the court review a Fifth Circuit ruling upholding OSHA’s order, which found that the contractor failed to train the worker properly. More from Bloomberg’s Bruce Rolfsen here.

FACEBOOK’S NEW CARETAKER LEAVE: “Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg announced that employees at the social media giant will now receive up to 20 days of bereavement leave in the event of a family member's death, six weeks of paid leave to care for an ill relative, and three days of paid family sick time to help out with a short-term illness,” Jena McGregor writes in the Washington Post. Sandburg’s husband Dave Goldberg died suddenly in 2015, apparently from a heart arrhythmia. More here.

OBAMA USCIS DIRECTOR TO SEYFARTH SHAW: Former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Leon Rodriguez will join the management-side law firm Seyfarth Shaw’s Labor and Employment practice as a partner, the firm announced Wednesday. Rodriguez, who was at USCIS from 2014-2017, worked previously as the director of the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services.

SENATE COMMITTEE APPROVES TRIBAL LABOR SOVEREIGNTY ACT: The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs approved a bill Wednesday that would exempt Native American owned and operated businesses on Native American land from the National Labor Relations Act (and the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board). Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), who introduced the legislation, said in a statement that he was “pleased” by the bill’s support. “Tribal governments are sovereign and deserve to be treated equally under the NLRA,” Moran said.

Unions such as UNITE HERE have opposed the bill because their members include Native Americans and non-Indians working in tribal casinos, but Native American tribes have backed the measure in the past. Three Democratic senators on the committee opposed it: Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.).

NLRB: UNION CAN’T PUNISH WORKER FOR FACEBOOK POSTS: The National Labor Relations Board ruled this week that a union could not punish a member for social media posts critical of the union’s business manager. In the case, Laborers’ International Union of North America, Local 91 removed a member from its out-of-work referral list after he criticized the business manager on Facebook.

While the union argued that the posts damaged its reputation as well as that of the business manager, the board said that workers’ rights to comment on union policies outweighed the union’s “vague” claim. The NLRB ordered the union to reimburse the member for his job search costs while he was out of work as well as provide back pay. Read the full decision here.

LOYOLA GRADS VOTE FOR UNION: Graduate students at Loyola University in Chicago voted to join SEIU Local 73, according to a ballot count Wednesday. Of the 120 votes counted, 71 were in favor of the union. The bargaining unit includes both PhD and master’s students who work as teaching assistants, research assistants, program assistants, and fellowship teachers in degree programs at the college of arts and sciences. More from the Chicago Tribune here.

About The Author : Ted Hesson

Ted Hesson is an employment and immigration reporter with POLITICO Pro and the author of the “Morning Shift” newsletter.

Prior to joining POLITICO in October 2016, Hesson spent more than a decade as a writer and editor with a focus on immigration policy. His work has appeared in National Journal, The Atlantic and VICE, among other outlets.

From 2012 to 2015, he worked as immigration editor at Fusion, a joint venture of ABC News and Univision.

Hesson holds a master’s degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and a bachelor’s degree from Boston College.

Born and raised in Philadelphia, he lived in New York City before relocating to Washington, D.C.

In his free time, he enjoys playing guitar, listening to podcasts and practicing Spanish.